Foreword
Patrice and I meet Richard and Julie at the Railroad Square, the seven o’clock screening of Touch of Evil (1957). Julie says the best prices on used Leicas are out of Georgia, my old stomping ground, a corner of it anyway, on the back of Lookout Mountain, Plumnelly, Georgia [etymology: plum out of Tennessee and nelly out of Georgia] back in the days of the Freedom Rides (1961-1965). I tell Richard how I think you can’t have a Preservation Sound Lab these days without two of them newfangled Nagra-Ds. Richard allows as how there’s still no sweeter sound out of the field than from our thirty year-old analog Nagras, and I just have to agree.
In accord with the best recommendations of the Librarian of Congress, as preservationists our first and highest obligation is to the Original production elements -- the film that went through the camera, the tape that was hooked to the microphone. As producers and archivists, we should insure that any media migration follows a two-track preservation process - the first track being true to the original, be it 35mm film or quarter inch full track analog tape, and the second being a very cautious approach to the digital domain.
BBWms Searsport, Maine
November 1998